Preparing Academics to Teach in Higher Education (PATHE)

Carrick Institute of Higher Education Funded Project

The PATHE project will scope different approaches currently adopted for the induction of academic staff as they commence their teaching practice in Australian higher education as well as reviewing international best practice.

This project has a budget of $300, 000 staged over 3 years.

Project Aims and Rationale

Currently induction programs are diverse in content, duration and process. They are also variable in quality and have no systematic sector-wide approach to their development, or the development of the staff who design and teach in them (Dearn, Ryan and Fraser, 2004).

The project aims to devise a framework for induction programs that will benefit the sector by promoting a set of shared expectations and understandings about the nature of university learning and teaching, and locating induction programs in that wider context.  Under such a framework, when an academic is recruited from another university there will be some common understanding of core learning and teaching principles.  This is not to impose homogeneity amongst induction programs, but rather, to encourage collaboratively-developed perspectives.

Project Approach

This project builds on and is informed by existing concepts developed in previous Foundations Colloquia.  The aims and design of the project are collaborative and inclusive. It has a residential component which provides opportunities for collaborative scholarship and dissemination of current and new practices.

This project proposes a model of national collaboration using a distributed leadership approach to project design and implementation.  The distributed leadership approach has been selected for its capacity to draw on varieties of expertise across a range of contexts, to cultivate and coordinate key relationships across a number of institutions, and to facilitate outcomes that are representative of the sector as a whole. In order to identify, examine and promote those features that support effective outcomes, this proposal will make use of, and develop further, the collaborative structures operating through the Foundations Colloquium network.

Project Steering Committee

Project Partners

At the time of submitting this proposal, 31 institutions had become partners and endorsements have been received from 30 institutions. These institutions are listed below. Contact Allan Goody if you would like to be a partner too.

Submitted Proposal

View the Proposal accepted by the Carrick Institute